


This Was Never Going to be Quiet

by scribblemyname



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Partnership, friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobbi has terrible taste in men, Hartley likes Hunter anyway, Mack keeps them all alive, and Hunter really should have asked before agreeing to do "anything" for Bobbi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Was Never Going to be Quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



When Lance Hunter met Bobbi Morse, it was at a party in Dubai. It was a great party: great drinks, great atmosphere, and the most gorgeous blonde Lance Hunter had ever laid his eyes on.

He got a name out of her after almost twenty minutes of trying to charm her, then finally got around to asking what brought her to this little shindig.

She tilted her head back and smiled slowly. "First vacation in three years. You?"

"Military leave." He shrugged. "Haven't decided yet whether that's military retirement."

"Hey, you've got some free time, right?" She leaned into him, and he didn't even stop to think beyond the way her eyes warmed and her mouth curved up invitingly. "You think you could do something for me?"

"Anything for you, love."

 

The huge black guy took one look at the two of them walking up, Bobbi giggling against Hunter's shoulder, and announced, "You have terrible taste in men."

She scoffed at that. "Your taste in guys is shy geeks."

"Your taste in guys is cocky hotshots," he countered, brows raised.

"You know, I am right here," Hunter pointed out.

"With great abs." Bobbi glanced up at him with that dreamy smile she'd drawn him in with in the first place.

Which only took away one smidge of Hunter's consternation that she had an opinion on his qualifications in that regard, seeing he hadn't yet gotten her naked, all hopes aside.

Her friend sighed and shook his head. "Can't forget the abs," he muttered, then stuck out his hand to shake. "Alphonso Mackenzie."

"But we just call him Mack." The look in Bobbi's eyes was a lot sharper than it had been, and Hunter began to wonder just what her request for a flirty partner was all about.

"Nice to meet you." He shook.

Mack reassuringly answered, "I hope so."

 

That hope was crushed under a firefight Hunter had absolutely _not_ been expecting sometime after Bobbi charmed her way past the secretary guarding the entrance to the upper floors of the house and didn't even bother trying to charm the guards actually up there.

"When I said anything..." Hunter started to say, but didn't get further.

Bobbi reached over and grabbed him to slam her mouth against his as she raised her gun and shot the guard. She pulled away and grinned at him.

Hunter was still trying to catch his breath at this whole turn of events.

She asked with a surprising amount of fondness, "Do you ever shut up?"

She knocked out the next guard with the butt of her gun and he didn't think he'd seen anything hotter in his life.

* * *

3 YEARS EARLIER

Bobbi Morse wasn't a field agent. She was a bio sciences Ph.D. with a fondness for Eskrima and guns who just happened to work for SHIELD. Then Fury came through SciTech, looking for the right credentials for his special deep cover ops and gave her the standard pitch.

"I've got a job for you," he told her, grinning under his eyepatch. "The correct answer is yes."

"Sir, yes, sir." It wasn't the most respectful response she'd ever let out of her mouth, but Director Fury surprised her by simply laughing.

"Knew you were the right agent for the job. Report to Agent Hartley in Training Gym 17 at 0700 tomorrow."

She watched him make a grand exit in that leather coat of his and muttered to herself, "Sir, yes, sir," again. She actually preferred reverse engineering crazy weaponry to using it herself.

 

There was only one person in the gym when Bobbi reported, so she went ahead and made the obvious assumption.

"Dr. Barbara Morse," the redhead greeted her like fresh meat, sizing her up.

Bobbi stared back, undaunted. "Agent Hartley."

"I'm going to be your SO," Hartley said, then pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Lose the glasses. You should wear contact lenses for this sort of training."

"I'll be in deep cover," Bobbi pointed out. "With glasses. I need to learn better hand to hand with or without them."

It was a valid point. Hartley conceded it with a small shrug. "Are you wearing contacts for if they fall off?"

"Yes."

"Then let's do this."

Bobbi was actually _good_ at hand to hand, and she hadn't gotten through Academy on the standard handicap granted prospective scientists, but Hartley...

 

"Hartley's amazing," Bobbi told Mack later. "She has a block or counter for anything you throw at her, and she can do this flip thing when you try to take her down—"

"Bobbi."

"Yeah?"

"Could you hand me that?" Mack asked again, patiently, this time with words because Bobbi was too far gone in admiration to notice his gesturing.

She handed him the tablet with a look.

"Not my fault you got a girl crush."

She scoffed. "See if I listen next time you gush about a guy."

Mack just smiled at her, indulgently. She sighed and went back to evaluating the casing on a new gun clearly developed by the same company that had manufactured the last one they'd looked at.

"I think I'll like the field," she said quietly, pushing the words out into the space between them with a caution she hoped he wouldn't actually notice. She wasn't bored with science, but the bio sciences side was moving more into the realm of weapons development and a project called TAHITI that she didn't want any part of. Working with Hartley had been fun.

"It's more than just fighting," Mack pointed out.

Bobbi shot him a look. "I know that. I'm supposed to be a spy. That means not getting caught and never having to fight. Hartley told me I had to learn how to play a long game."

Mack chuckled. "Did you tell her you already do?"

 

"He'll be joining you on the job?" Hartley glanced back and forth between the two of them.

Bobbi twirled a battle staff. "Got the transfer paperwork back this morning."

Mack let Hartley look it over.

"I'm getting too old for this," she commented. "All right, you two. Let's see what you've got."

 

* * *

NOW

Hartley was even less impressed than Mack was when Bobbi introduced them, largely because Hunter was holding off the incoming backup from the house with wide eyes and his military issued sidearm while Bobbi finished grabbing what they came for out of the safe. Not getting caught hadn't actually ever been an option on this particular mission, and Bobbi had come a long way since she trained under Hartley three years back.

She kind of liked that Hunter didn't go unarmed, even on his downtime, but they'd run smaller chances of getting caught if he quit swearing up a storm.

"So this is the guy you brought in as cover?" Hartley demanded before she knocked out another guard with her elbow.

Lethal elbows. Bobbi grinned. 

Hunter sputtered. "Cover?"

"I like him. Besides, he's well trained," Bobbi pointed out.

"And a security risk." Hartley shook her head. "Oh, fine. Let's get out of here."

They all had the self-preservation to wait until they got out safe to argue about right, wrong, and who agreed or didn't to tangle with international politics and government-sanctioned petty thievery.

* * *

"So Mack." Hunter leaned back comfortably on the broad hotel bed and looked over at Bobbi combing out her hair.

"What about him?"

"You know," he prodded.

She looked amused but answered, "I love him more than just about anyone else in the world."

That wasn't exactly the way Hunter wanted to hear her say the 'L' word. He sat up. "Just about?"

"Well, there's my mom." Bobbi shot him a coy smile that said she knew exactly what she was doing. She set down her brush and waited expectantly. 

He hadn't thought about her family at all yet, in terms of knowing Bobbi. Too caught up perhaps in her job and her secrets and the fact that she seemed to genuinely want him around even when it wasn't for a job. Family meant people whose opinion might matter in the long run. "Do I know her?" He wouldn't put it past Bobbi to be Hartley's kid and never have said anything.

Bobbi shook her head.

"Am I going to meet her sometime?"

"Probably not."

"Oh." He didn't know what to make of that, but she was still giving him that maddening smile as she slipped out of her robe and came over to the bed. "Anyone else on just about?"

She didn't answer. She just kissed him.

 

Hartley took a bit of a shine to Hunter, if he did say so himself. He had never figured out exactly what made women like him, when they rolled their eyes at his suave party act and huffed in exasperation half the time on a job. Hartley nodded approval when he turned out to be competent at paramilitary operations, but he had enough experience with women to know that wasn't what actually made her hire him when she could.

"I've been on this job a long time," she told him, somewhere in between the stories of family and her friends in the trenches. "I always know. Picked him," she pointed out, nodding at Mack.

"Bobbi picked me."

"But I had to choose to keep you."

Mack just shook his head and kept working on rigging up the piece of equipment Hartley wanted to blast a hole in a building with.

"One nice quiet hole, to order." Hunter shook his head. "You know this isn't going to be a quiet operation."

"It better be," was Hartley's only reply.

The woman could make an entrance and pretty dramatically save the day, but she also knew exactly when to sneak in and out without anyone the wiser.

 

Which works great if the building doesn't fall on you.

"Go on without me," Hunter ordered, but Hartley gave him a scathing look, ordered Mack over to the other side, and they hauled him out together, grunting and groaning as quietly as they could.

"Where's he hurt?" Mack started doing assessment as soon as they got in the van.

Everywhere. Everything hurt. Hunter had to breathe in time with Hartley's count so he didn't start hyperventilating. "If I don't make it, tell Bobbi I love her," he ground out.

"Ask Bobbi to marry you already and stop whining about it," Hartley ordered. She ripped open the emergency medical kit.

"Bobbi bloody married to SHIELD Morse would never marry me," Hunter retorted. His face softened slightly, eyes widening. "She wouldn't, would she?"

He was lightheaded from bleeding everywhere, his leg was throbbing, and the stabbing pains running up and down his back had him fairly convinced he was dying, but he stopped focusing on that as he tried to figure out the mind of Barbara Morse—an impossibility if anyone asked him.

"You're not allowed to die," Hartley informed him bluntly as she wrapped the bandage around his leg way too tight. "She'd never forgive me."

Hunter groaned at the blinding pain. "You call this tender loving care, you merciless American?"

Mack tightened his grip on Hunter's other side. "You think he's as bad as that?" he directed toward Hartley, worry coloring his tone.

"He's still breathing, isn't he?"

"More like still complaining about this poor field dressing," Hunter ground out. "Who cleared you?"

Hartley's mouth twitched upward in a sideways smile.

Mack just kept his hold on Hunter. "Don't die on me, okay? You're not allowed to die."

He'd lost enough people, Hunter remembered, and it wasn't like Hunter hadn't lost his own fair share in his time in the military. He wrapped his hand around Mack's arm. "Not dying."

 

When he woke up to the sound of a beeping heart monitor and white hospital walls, he wasn't entirely surprised to see Bobbi pulled up in a chair close to the bed, hand and hair spread out over his side. She'd clearly been there a while before she fell asleep, judging from the styrofoam coffee cups overflowing the trash can and her abandoned paperback with the bookmark towards the end.

"Hey, Bob." His voice was scratchy but serviceable. "Bobbi."

She woke slowly as he kept calling her name, then sat up, peering at him from slightly narrowed eyes. "You're awake."

"Yeah." Hunter shot her a smile that probably gave far too much away to how happy he was too see her. Bloody meds. "Right as rain."

Bobbi looked less than impressed at that. "Sure, Hunter." She smiled a little, curled her fingers around his.

"Bob." He hesitated.

She looked up, open and listening.

He forced the words about before he could lose the courage. He'd blame it on the painkillers later if she said no. "Marry me, before one of us kicks the bucket early."

She stared at him for a long moment, then gave him that curved mouth smile that always seemed so sincere and full of promise. "On one condition."

"Yeah?"

Her face went serious. "You don't die on me out there."

Hunter couldn't help but grin. "I won't if you don't."

She smiled, hand tightening on his.

She'd said yes. She'd actually said yes. He leaned back on the poor, thin hospital bed pillow and finally asked outright, "Do you love me a tiny bit more than Mack?"

She rolled her eyes and shut him up with a kiss.


End file.
